Covers, covers... Scheming little sisters

Hello y'all!

I'd like to dedicate this post to the scheming siblings of Dallas, and to be precise, naughty little sisters. There were many, because for some reason Dallas producers loved to make the little sisters wicked. I don't recall any older sisters that were particularly evil. Of course there was April Stevens, (Sheree J. Wilson) who technically was an older sister and quite evil, in the beginning at least. However, when she was first introduced, we didn't know she had a sister, and finally, when Michelle (Kimberly Foster) showed up, April had already given up her wicked ways. Therefore, she doesn't really count.

The epitome of scheming sisters - and the first of her name - was of course Sue Ellen's (Linda Gray) little sister Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby). Here's a cover of her in Katso-magazine 1984. "Dallas continues - and so does the curse!"

Inside we find out that stars of Dallas are cursed: they have little luck in their love life or they can't find roles after leaving Dallas.

I had a quite indifferent relationship with Kristin, because originally I started watching Dallas after she had been killed. So I kind of knew who she was, but I didn't know what she looked like. This was of course the time of innocence before our dear friend World Wide Web.

So, when me and my friends were playing Dallas, and some poor random kid had to take the role of Kristin (no child ever wanted to play older folk like Miss Ellie or Jock, so even the dead girl was a better option), I always pictured her as a blond woman. I don't know why. Later Suosikki-magazine published a story of Dallas and I finally saw Kristin for the first time. For a long time I had a hard time picturing this beautiful brunette as the person in our role plays.

Eventually, during first round of Dallas' reruns in the 90s, I finally saw Kristin in action. I liked Mary Crosby's work a lot, although her character was not very likeable. I miss those days, when there still were Dallas episodes to watch for the first time ever. Sigh.

But I digress. Moving on to the next piece of fierce female energy: Morgan Brittany as Katherine Wenthworth. Here she is on the cover of Katso 1984. "Morgan Brittany was afraid of Hitchcock". (I think it should've been another way around, I mean look at those eyes!)

Now, Katherine was someone I loved to hate. Although when I was younger, I guess it was not so much love, only hate. She was, after all, the one who destroyed Bobby and Pam's happiness with that awful letter. This I couldn't forgive.

Later on, I learned to admire Morgan Brittany's portrait of Katherine and was sad to see her go. She was fun! If only TNT's Dallas had brought her back...

There were at least two other little sisters, who were quite wicked: Jessica (Alexis Smith), Clayton's (Howard Keel) sister, and Michelle Stevens. Sadly I don't have any pictures or articles of Jessica. Nevertheless, she deserves to be mentioned, as she was very, very memorable character. Bless her dark, little heart. Kimberly Foster's cover is already on another post of this blog.

So, Dallas loved to make it's little sister -characters wicked. These women also had something else in common: all of them shot - or at least tried to shoot - a main character. Kristin shot JR (duh!), Katherine shot Bobby, Jessica aimed her gun at Miss Ellie and Michelle shot Sheila Foley.
It really must have been pure hell to grow up in the shadow of your older sibling in Dallas!

Dallas departee: Patrick Duffy

Hello my fellow fans,

This time I'd like to take you all back to 1985. Dallas was at its peak in Finland, so it was shocking to learn that Patrick Duffy and Charlene Tilton were leaving the show. Whaat? Why would anyone leave Dallas? Where would PD and CT even live if not in Southfork? Madness.

Even in the 80s, the time before internet and mobile media, the Finnish press generously printed this piece of news long before it happened on our television screens. At the time, Finland was about one year, or a year and a half behind in showing Dallas, so when The Swan Song finally aired here, we'd had a long time to prepare.

Apu magazine printed this wonderful article in 1985 about Bobby dying. It is titled "Will Bobby be unemployed?" It came out during the time when Bobby was shot, so it kind of gave mixed signals on how he was going to leave the show.

I remember swooning over this next picture of Patrick in his jeans (according the caption, the writer of this article may've done the same thing: "In one week Bobby gets a thousand fan letters, including roughly a couple of hundred marriage proposals. No wonder though, as he is such a Mr. Longlegs and Sugarbums." Teehehee! He surely is!

Next page has this funny cartoon of the cast. I remember wondering why anyone would draw Cliff as a muscular hunk and Bobby as a mousey elderly person. Oh, well.

As I said earlier, this article is about Bobby's shooting, although it also informs us about PD leaving the show year later. Title screams: "Bobby's shooting was an accident?"

Final page dives into Dynasty, as well. It states rather whimsically that "Even Bobby's dog had a motive", "Donna Reed is the new Ellie" and "Lucy becomes a waitress". Of course one of these was merely a joke.

Random tidbits of the text:

* "Charlene Tilton leaves the show alongside Patrick Duffy, although not quite as voluntarily. She is rather surly, because of the treatment she is getting - to put it mildly."

* "Oh Bobby, why do you have to sit in JR's chair? The bullets meant for JR sink into your pretty head."

* "This time, Bobby survives the attack. Wearing dark glasses (maybe imitating Dynasty's Blake?) we will see him next fall when Bobby's final season starts in Finland."  

* Patrick is a sensible guy and has no grand delusions of himself, which would be quite common in Hollywood. He says "All I want is a more challenging role. In a tv series? Why not, since I already have a familiar audience there."  

Of course we all know that Patrick came back to Dallas after a year. I was happy. However, during that year I was thrilled to see Patrick starring in a tv movie Strong Medicine alongside Dynasty's Fallon, Pamela Sue Martin. It was like Bobby and Pamela back together again, in an alternative universe. :)

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!

This was the Christmas card that was published on Suosikki magazine in the mid-80s. I thought it was sad to see Pam and Bobby in separate pictures. They were divorced on the show during that time, so I figured it was only fitting to put Bobby with his momma and Pam with her precious horse shoes... ;)

Moreover, it was appropriate that Afton should be in this card, after all, she was highly popular in Finland. Audrey Landers even visited Helsinki with her sister Judy in the 80s. Maybe, if Ken Kercheval had sang Manuel Goodbye wearing red glittery dress, he would have made it to this card, as well.

Nevertheless, with this card I want to say thank you to all of you for sticking with me and this blog.
I hope you enjoy the last days of 2016! See y'all soon!

Covers, covers... Linda Gray's relationships

Hello my dear readers,

It's been a while, I know. I apologize. It's been quite a summer and autumn, but now I feel it's time to get back to this blog business. So here we go!

Linda Gray's magazine covers definitely deserve their own post. As you know, I was a Pam-boy myself, but after Victoria Principal left Dallas, I began to see Dallas' other leading lady in a different light. Moreover, I thought that Linda Gray became more radiant and beautiful as she matured. She was also one of the best actresses on the show.

However, before Pamela's departure, I wasn't particularly fond of Gray's character.  When we used to play Dallas with the kids next door, we never had a JR, because nobody wanted to play him, and we also had to force my friend's little sister to be Sue Ellen. It was all about Pam, Bobby and occasional Lucy. We were a bit confused about Sue Ellen's name, though: was 'Sue' her first name and 'Ellen' her middle name, or was 'Ellen' her last name? Eventually we decided  it had to be her last name, after all, no one else on Dallas had two first names. So when the phone rang, our Sue Ellen, 7 years of age, answered accordingly: "Ellen residence, Sue speaking".

Those were the days.

It seems that Linda Gray had more cover stories in Finland than Victoria Principal, although I think it was the other way around globally. Linda seemed to be popular among certain kind of women's magazines, but she never appeared in rock magazines like Victoria, Charlene or even Priscilla.

Especially Linda's divorce seemed to be very popular topic, and particularly in 1983. Here's the first cover story of the year:

I think she looks particularly lovely on this cover. The title of Apu says "Success proved disastrous - Linda Gray gets divorced".

Inside, the magazine dives into Linda's bubbly life: "Nowadays Linda Gray enjoys her baths alone. Earlier she spent much of her free time sitting in the bubbles with her husband Ed".

"Linda caught the disease of Dallas - divorce is happening." Finnish press loved to talk about "the curse of Dallas" or "Dallas disease" when referring to miserable lives of Dallas' stars. I recall several other similar titles of the 1980s.

The story goes on saying Linda doesn't want to be a superwoman anymore. Now she wants peace and quiet. "Sue Ellen is so stupid", Linda is fed up with her. She wants her to be smarter, but obviously it doesn't fit for the story.

Next cover is from Anna later the same year. This is the first time the press hinted that Linda was having an affair with her co-star Larry Hagman:

"Scandalous romance of Dallas stars Linda and Larry!" This was also one of the favourite subjects of the Dallas stories during the 1980s. It used to make me frustrated, because no matter how I wanted it to happen, there were never articles about the scandalous romance of Victoria Principal and Patrick Duffy. It seemed so unfair. Sigh. However, in retrospect we know that these rumours weren't true. Linda and Larry were only good friends.

Next we have September's issue of Jaana telling us that "Linda Gray has fallen in love with a millionaire - even more passionate than on Dallas":

I wonder why they used this old photo of Linda. She already had her famous short look that year, so this old picture really doesn't do her justice.

The year goes on! October issue of Anna spills the T:

"Dallas' Linda Gray opens up about her divorce". Of course this was the time before internet, but it still seems a bit dated: Apu told us about her divorce in March and this is October. Well, inside the mag confesses that the rumours about Linda and Larry were false.

This is all for now. Enjoy and take care, my fellow Dallas fans!

Covers, covers... Victoria Principal Edition

Hello my friends!

Picture it. Northern Finland, 1982-83-ish. Dallas was the show among the 8-17-year-olds. Everyone was watching it and talking about it. 

Everyone except me. 

I couldn’t care less about those fictional characters on TV. After all, there were so much more interesting things to do on Friday nights! Like playing police and robbers outside. 

I don’t remember how I came to open the TV and actually watch Dallas for the first time, but it was all it took – I was completely hooked. Instantly.

I had heard about JR, of course, and I was eager to see what the bastard looked like. Then this gorgeous black-haired hunk appeared and I was like "who knew JR was such a piece of meat"? Of course, my dad told me that was not JR, but Bobby. What a relief!

However, when Victoria Principal appeared on my screen, I was stunned.

Stunned, I say!

I had never seen a woman so beautiful! I quickly learned that she was Pam and she was in a mental institute, because she couldn’t have children. Oh no! I only hoped that Pam and Bobby would be together so that those beautiful people could live happily ever after. I was devastated to learn that Bobby was in love with that Pamela-woman and therefore couldn’t be with Pam. You can imagine my embarrasment when I realized that Pam and Pamela were the same person. 

(Come on, I was only 10 and English wasn’t my first language! It was like those Tsekhov plays where every character has Russian nicknames and you never know who are they referring to... oh, well.)

Since those days Victoria Principal has been my absolutely favourite Dallas star and therefore the topic of this post, as well. J

It’s surprising how few Finnish magazine covers there are featuring her, given that she was probably the most popular cast member after Larry Hagman. I have already published a couple of her covers earlier, but here are a few more for your pleasure! (If you have more Finnish VP covers that I don’t know about, please let me know and we’ll be BFFs forever.)

The first cover from 1982 Seura has rather small picture of VP, however, it is the classic photo of her with Linda and Charlene. "The girls of Dallas return to our screens." This issue also has a complete family tree inside, however, they have Gary Ewing and Mitch Cooper mixed up. After all, they are both... well, men. Therefore, identical.  

The next one is 1984 cover of Apu declaring that ”Happy Victoria Principal wants to be a mom soon”. Nevertheless, this was not meant to be. 

The other cover from 1984 is from OK magazine. It says that "Victoria Principal destroyed Andy Gibb!" Oh dear. OK magazine was like a National Enquirer of the rock magazines. 

Funny thing about this cover though: it has a red heart over the pic of VP saying "Hundreds of pen pals". I always thought that it was Victoria Principal who had hundreds of pen pals and wanted desperately to be one of them. 

Another thing: Hanoi Rocks was a quite famous band from Finland, but I used to think that heavy rock and hanoi rocks mean the same thing. That's how much I cared about rock music.  

Fast forward to 2002: Victoria is on the cover of Katso magazine's Soap opera special. It was during the time she was on the short-lived Titans. It says "Age only makes a woman better" or something like that. 

Well, that's all for now, darlings.  #stillwaitingforthenextvictoriacoverinafinnishmagazine

Promises, promises...

Hello my friends!

So sorry I haven't updated this blog for a long time. I have been busy graduating from the University of the Arts Helsinki and working and generally being a busy bee. However, summer vacation is starting in a week and I'll have time to focus on more important things in life: Dallas and this blog.

I will be posting a new post soon. This I promise.

So, as an apology I give you this random Priscilla Presley -article from 1987. She is looking smoking hot in red. The text tells us, how she met Elvis when she was only 14, married him after seven years and now she is doing it for the second time. (And by 'it' I mean getting married; get your mind out of the gutter, will you!) Her second husband is a film producer Marco Garibaldi.

As it later turned out, the two never actually got married, but stayed together till 2006. They had a son together, Navarone.

Cover me badd

 Happy Easter, my dear readers! It's time for some chocolate eggs, bunnies - and magazine covers!

This time I'd like to spend a few moments with some supporting cast members of Dallas' later years. I realize these were not the golden years of the show, however, there were some bright spots here and there.

First: I give you hunky Jack Scalia a.k.a Nicholas Pearce on the cover of Katso-magazine in 1990. I had a huge crush on him. Oh boy! Of all the leading men in Sue Ellen's life - Peter, Dusty, Cliff, JR, Don - I liked him the best. Too shame they made him wear fat pullovers and sweaters, yet they gave Christopher Atkins speedos a few years earlier. Sigh. Why everything happens to me?

Title says "Jack Scalia saves a bad show" referring not to Dallas, but "Wolf". True or false, I don't know. Most importantly, I remember he had a nice, hairy chest, didn't he? Or was it just a dream I had...? Oh, well.

Next we have lovely Cathy Podewell. Year is still 1990. 

I was kind of excited that in the 1990s Dallas was trying to freshen up with these particular cast members. At the same time, I was sensing they were desperate to find same kind of charisma the original leading ladies had and that Dallas was sliding fast toward cancellation. So, I was praying they'd bring back Victoria Principal and Linda Gray to save the show. Sadly, they didn't.

Now, Cally was not every Dallas fan's favourite character, but I liked her. I wish they had done more with her. I would've liked to see her developing into a strong business woman like Sue Ellen did. But without her paintings, though. 

Title says "Dallas' enchantress Cathy cast a spell on JR". That's nice. (She had a smooth chest, by the way.) 

Last, it's wicked Michelle Stevens, a.k.a Kimberly Foster, in 1990. 

You know, it's funny how Dallas was still kind of hot in Finland in 1990. Three covers on Katso that year, which is not bad for a 12-year-old show. "Kimberly Foster is the newest baddie of Dallas". She surely was! Most importantly, she was the first female antagonist to have such short hair. I adored her style, it was very 90s look. With that look, she could be Justin Bieber's bitchy mom!